Is 'people' plural? [closed]

Which one is correct?

• A lot of people in South East Asia speak 3 languages
• A lot of people in South East Asia speaks 3 languages?

In modern English, people is the de facto plural of person.

People and person have separate Latin origins. There are examples of people used as a plural of person from as early as the 14th century.

Persons was the original plural, and it is possible to find examples of its use in all types of writing up to the present, but it prevails only in a few contexts, most notably law and law enforcement, and in a few common phrases (e.g., persons of interest, displaced persons, missing persons).

Elsewhere, it usually gives way to people.

And as @ Mou states, there is an old usage prescription holding that people applies to uncountable groups of individuals. E.g. Times Square was packed with people.

while persons applies to groups that are easily counted E.g. There were four persons on the balcony.

But there is no good reason for this distinction, and in any case it is not consistently borne out in real-world usage.

A lot of people in South East Asia speak 3 languages.

A lot of South-East Asian people speak 3 languages.

You may apply the following distinction:

People is a mass noun referring to an undetermined number of humans.

(“I’ve known a lot of people like that”),

while persons is employed when the quantity is known

(“Seven persons were apprehended”). Though nothing wrong with "Seven people were apprehended".

Persons is still appropriate in legal and other formal contexts

(“Authorities are seeking persons of interest”)

and when referring to the human body

(“A search was made of their persons”),

People is occasionally used as a verb synonymous with populate :

(“We will soon people the entire planet”);

(Populate and people share etymological origin.)